Desert Wildfires
by Dienekes
Summary: After a road filled with death and hard choices, the Courier has decided to take the future of the Mojave into her hands with her Brotherhood lover by her side. How will she balance her new-found power and her humanity? How will she make a better wasteland? Or will her choices doom the Wasteland to bloodshed and chaos? Veronica & Fem Courier
1. Onto Her Shoulders

**Desert Wildfires**

**Chapter 1: Onto Her Shoulders**

She saw him again. His withered face. His eyes, clouded with the aging of countless years, but still burning with intelligence and aggression. He wheezed feebly as pistons fired, releasing him from his cryo-chamber, raising him until he was eye to eye with the Courier.

She eyed him with a cool look, showing only the slightest regret.

"Mr. House."

"Why. . ." his voice rasped for the first time in hundreds of years with his own vocal chords, rather than the audio projection he used from his terminal. He coughed and the courier watched patiently. She'd reduced a handful of his machines to slag with a plasma rifle which lay, at the ready, in her practiced arms.

"I was this world's best chance," he growled. "I spent hundreds of years. . ."

"I had no choice," she said softly. She took a deep breath and met his eyes "I can't let you destroy the Brotherhood."

"Those. . . lunatics. . ." Mr. House said, gathering his weak breath. "Why on earth would you doom everything. . For them?"

"It's not a rational answer," the courier said. "To be honest, I understand why you wanted them wiped out. They can be a block-headed bunch."

Mr. House said nothing.

"My robotic intelligence should have finished hacking your network by now. Disconnected here, you'll have no control. You may not last very long. . ." she muttered, looking at him, feeling a bit sick to see his flesh, bundled up along the joints, discolored. . . "but I want to keep you alive long enough to discuss your plans. . . for the future."

Mr. House's expression went dark. "Kill me."

The courier hadn't expected Mr. House, a man of such dignity to ask for such an abrupt end to his influence. But part of her understood. With his pride. . .

"I'd rather," he said fiercely, "_die_ then watch an imbecile like you try to execute my plans for a greater new vegas." His eyes were afire now, staring at her with accusation.

_Pride, _she thought to herself.

She decided to oblige his wish. She drew her dagger, a long vicious thing she kept in a small sheath on the side of her thigh and she struck it into Mr. House's flaccid chest, right into the heart. The light faded from his eyes in moments, though moments longer than it took most to die.

Mr. House was a very. . . strong person. Not physically, of course. And now, the man who was larger than life . . . was dead.

As his old blood seeped out over his chest she felt a weight settle onto her shoulders. There was no big man with a plan for the Mojave anymore. Now there was only her: a courier by the name of Teresa.

And she felt with a sudden rush of horror and fear _what if I fail? What if I cannot do what he would have done? What if I just brought ruin to everything and everyone? _

But it was worth it, of course. She couldn't let the brotherhood die. She owed it. . . to the woman she loved.

**Xxxxxxxxxxx**

_(A few weeks later) _

Teresa awoke with a start and swung herself up in her bedspread. She knew that she'd dreamed again, that same dream that took her back to the moment she'd killed Mr. House. After her panting subsided she found that her room was quiet and still.

It was the noise outside that had woken her.

She felt movement beside her. Veronica lay there, murmuring dreaming thoughts as she nestled restlessly into the covers. Teresa regarded her appreciatively, the ex-brotherhood scribe and procurement specialist. She was the type of girl who, when she was mussed up and awkwardly splayed beneath the covers, looked all the cuter for it.

Veronica was just that: devastatingly cute. Sometimes Teresa could only wonder how she'd gotten so lucky to find such a cute and amazing creature as Veronica. It certainly wasn't from good karma. . .

Teresa climbed from bed and walked to the window.

There were flames in Freeside. She sat in a chair and regarded them, questions and ideas swimming through her head.

She wanted to talk to someone, but didn't want to wake Veronica. She knew from the throbbing pain in her own head that she'd only slept a few hours at the most.

"Awake already?" a small monitor buzzed from beside her. _Of course, there's him, _she thought. Teresa had a robotic friend who was just as much an insomniac as she was.

"Just wanted to watch my city burn," she said softly.

"Well, Freeside isn't exactly under our control yet so you're certainly not to blame."

"But I am, aren't I?"

Teresa smiled. It was questions like this that made Yes Man quit his incessant chattering. To disagree with her would be seen as disrespectful but to agree that it was her fault would likewise be seen the same way. It was a catch-22 for the artificial personality programmed explicitly to be. . . well, _spineless_.

She lost track of the hours as she watched the chaos. She had Yes Man put up a tally of the deaths on the screen beside her so she could see the human toll. The deaths sometimes paused for minutes, sometimes hours, and sometimes they started rolling in one after the other as the Kings and the former NCR soldiers and citizens fought in the streets.

"You were up all night again, weren't you," came a critical voice from behind her.

Teresa turned and saw Veronica, standing in her underwear. It was black and looked very soft. It was enough to shake her from her half-sleepy haze. "God Veronica," Teresa said with a half-grin. "Good to see you."

Vernonica blushed ever so slightly as she came beside Teresa. "I just thought to myself 'hey, what underwear should I wear for the apocalypse.'"

"So you chose to wear what you wore yesterday."

"Yup," she said matter-of-factly. Teresa couldn't resist Veronica for long when she had that silly little triumphant smile on her face so she took Veronica by the waist, and pulled her forcefully to her.

"Excuse me, ma'am," came a timid robotic voice.

Veronica giggled as the kiss came apart.

"DAMN IT," Teresa shouted to the monitor.

"Apologies," came the voice again, "but you said you wanted updates on the major NCR and legion activities."

Teresa glanced between Veronica and Yes Man a few times before sighing in defeat. "What is it?"

"The Legion assault that hit north of the dam," Yes-man said, showing a map come up of the norther Dam from Bitter Springs to Boulder city. "Mr. House's sensors show a large Legion force has captured Bitter springs, and with it thousands of NCR soldiers and civilian refugees."

"Has the legion reformed? Already?"

"They appear to be in good order. Their forces are. . . quite numerically large."

"Draw up a report, Yes-man. I want specifics," Teresa commanded. "Veronica," she said, eyes narrowing, "We're going to be needing our power armor."

"Aye aye, el capitan," Veronica said, giving a mock salute.

As Veronica walked beside her, Teresa spoke, her mind racing. "I think I know how we can sort out that Freeside problem."

"Oh? Going to wave your magic wand and make it all go away? If you have magic, could you make my breasts a bit larger?"

"The legion attack on Bitter Springs came at just the right time. This will be useful. . . and larger?" Teresa asked, raising her eyebrows, "Do you want back problems?"


	2. 2- Weight of Responsibility

**Desert Wildfires**

**Chapter 2: Weight of Responsibility**

_(In the dunes to the Southwest of Bitter Springs)_

Decimus Cennus wasn't born a soldier of the legion, but he could hardly remember his old life.

They'd swept through Bitter Springs without much effort. He was a low ranking officer when the offensive began, but as the officer corps had fallen in the fires of battle, he had risen to Centurio, a leader of a thousand men. His armor still had holes and stained blood where it's previous owner had been shot to pieces in an ambush by NCR soldiers in the initial push.

The fighting had been vicious, but Decimus seized the title of Centurio quickly, pleased the right officers, and had any men who spoke out whipped for insubordination. Then, after a quick scouting mission revealed a mass of wounded soldiers and civilians out in the open south of Bitter Springs and relatively unguarded, Decimus did what all Legion soldiers dreamed to do: he took slaves. Thousands of slaves.

They would bring a mighty gift to Caesar out of the jaws of this massive defeat, and Decimus expected the prettiest of the slaves, silly women that they were, would be made _his _property.

It brought a dark pleasure to Decimus, the thought of owning a woman as a slave. In his old life in the tribes of Utah, living in a tribe he didn't even care to give a name, he had a woman he liked, a woman that was almost his. Until the legion came, and took her from him.

And when they took her from him. . . Decimus found that he didn't loathe them, the Legion soldiers that ravaged his woman and ravaged his town. He found, as he was forced to watch, that he hated his wife, and he hated his people for their weakness and their ignorant absurdity.

And the Legion had molded this thought of Decimus. _Women _were weak, he had learned. They were little more than cattle for breeding, objects to be traded by the true warriors. His wife had been weak, and Decimus had been foolish. But now, Decimus could take another woman, a _better _woman to be _his._ The legion had taught him that. He eyed the long lines of slaves, his soldiers keeping weapons pointed at them to keep them moving.

It was dry and hot in the dunes, and every so often, a slave would fall, and be left, laying limply, in the desert sands. It was a regrettable loss of perfectly good slaves, but Decimus' soldiers were low on water, and a soldier always drank before a slave.

There was a low deep rumbling, and the soldiers and slaves both came to a halt, confusion spreading among them. "Binoculars!" Decimus called and a pair was passed to him by his second-in-command.

Decimus looked through the eyepiece and saw the rumbles from behind them were explosions. . . big ones.

He bellowed orders to muster cohorts of his legion to reinforce the rear guard, to take up positions on the high ground among the dunes, but wheeled robots came rolling from all sides. Javelins bounced harmlessly from their metal bodies, and their laser weapons burned holes through his men rank by rank as the explosions of heavy fragmentation grenades tore into them.

Decimus could have ordered his men to kill as many slaves as they could and then to kill themselves. In the old legion, he might have given this order, out of fear of Caesar, but he'd seen Caesar's might broken at the Dam, broken by these machines and this mysterious _courier. _

And so, as the explosions ripped around him, the Centurion, Decimus, raised his arms in surrender.

As if waiting for his signal, the men under his command who still had their limbs and their lives, followed his example and the robots kept their heavily armaments pointed at them, deathly quiet. Only Decimus' men made noises, groans and cries of agony. The robot army remained silent and still.

Then there was a voice, "_Send forward your commander." _

It was a _woman's_ voice. Decimus bristled, but he approached the robot from where the voice had come. He lay his weapons down openly though he kept a knife tucked on his thigh.

As he approached, advancing through the still forms of this deadly robot force, he saw two figures standing in power armor, one carrying a large laser rifle. Around her lay the smoking corpses of his rear guard and he could see from the burn residue on her rifle's mouth, that she'd ended the lives of many of his men here, that woman in the power armor.

And he knew it could only be one woman. He approached her, and did his best to hide his contempt.

Xxxxxxxxxx

"Why are we talking to this guy? You _know _the legion. You've _talked _to Caesar. They treat all women as dogs. . . probably worse than dogs. The legion loves their dogs. . ."

"We've already spoken," Teresa said, buzzing through her power armor, "we spoke with our lasers and our explosives. I'm looking to change the Mojave and that _includes_ the people in it."

"Does it include jackass of the month?"

Teresa looked and saw where Veronica was directing her latest verbal barb, seeing a Legion man dressed in metal armor and a tattered red robe wearing a look of utter arrogant contempt. He _did _look like a jackass.

He came until he was a few score yards away, and the three stared at each other. "You're this unit's commander?"

"And you're the _Courier_," he said with a dull expression. . . "the legendary woman of the desert who accomplishes wonders." He laughed contemptuously to show how absurd he found the idea. "Do you have machines do _all _of your fighting? Even your body is covered by a machine. I wonder how you would fair just against me. . . just fist to fist, in my tent perhaps. You would be sorry, then, I think."

Veronica made a feigned puking noise.

"Hah, another woman," he said with a dark chuckle. He'd been bested by an army led by _women_. The idea of it seemed like an unfunny joke.

"Look buddy," Veronica said power fist humming on her armor's gauntlet, stained with gore, "You don't want me to punch you."

"I didn't call you here to trade threats," Teresa said sharply. "I called you here because you don't want to die and because your neck is right in my vice-grip _right now._ So I suggest you lose the attitude quickly or you will feel the agony of having your precious _manhood _burned off with a laser rifle."

"Crispy," Veronica added with a light threatening laugh.

The Centurion went quiet, a look of rage passing over his face. But he did lose the attitude, at least the verbal attitude. _He can be trained. _

"Good," Teresa said. "Now, tell me. . . what is the state of affairs with your men and your captives."

"Our _slaves._"

"Not your slaves anymore."

The Centurion nodded reluctantly. "Ita Vero. That's true. . . Well, we have wounded."

There was a long silence. Then the silence grew longer.

"Uh. . . Teresa?" Veronica said softly, but not too soft for the Centurion. "What are we going to do about the wounded."

"We're also running low on water," The Centurion added unamusedly. "Some of the slaves are dying from dehydration."

Veronica and Teresa traded a few more awkward glances. "Well uh. . . we don't exactly have water supplies or. . . medical supplies," Teresa said. "So yeah."

"Well this is embarrassing," Veronica muttered.

"My third Cohort was just massacred by incompetents," the Centurion grumbled.

"We're learning quickly!" Veronica retorted. "So. . . wounded people," she said, looking to Teresa for direction. "Now what?"

"We don't have those kinds of resources," Teresa admitted. "I suppose I didn't think it totally through."

"Who'd have the resources the help us."

"It's time for us to pay Arcade Ganon a visit. . . I suppose he owes me now that his dream of an independent New Vegas has been realized."


	3. 3- Priority Shift

**Desert Wildfires**

**Chapter 3: Priority Shift**

(_Weeks Prior, soon after the Killing of "Mr. House.") _

Teresa lay in the bedspread of her Lucky 38 suite, looking into the brown, passionate eyes of the woman she had become addicted to, the woman she'd just killed the leader of New Vegas to protect.

"I just feel like I'm losing everything," this beautiful woman said. This brotherhood scribe who Teresa had found wandering the desert sand.

"You'll never lose me."

"Last time I went to the bunker. . . after I confronted the Elder. Those men. . . they wanted to kill me. I knew some of them from childhood. I knew the nicknames that they'd been called when the other kids teased them."

"I bet you never teased them."

Veronica giggled. "How did you know these things about me?"

"Because I know you're a big softie."

"What if my home isn't home anymore? They'll always be my family, but what if they don't want me to be a member of their family any more?"

"You have a home with me."

"I just. . ." Veronica hesitated, "I just feel like no good thing will ever stay for long. It'll all fall away. . ."

"We can build a better world. A world that will never fall away."

"A better wasteland? I wish I could believe that."

"Believe in me. I'm a force of nature."

"A lovely one at that."

**xxxxxxxxxxx**

_(Present time, the Old Mormon Fort, Freeside, New Vegas)_

"He's coming around," Arcade Gannon announced in his usual unenthusiastic, semi-sarcastic tone. As per usual, he was dressed smartly in the white coat of a doctor that matched his nearly-white blond hair, his glasses uncharacteristically clean by the Mojave's standards.

"Good work," Julie Farkas replied, wiping the blood from her hands. "Another life, saved." She yawned as she supported herself against the walls of the Old Mormon Fort operating room. Arcade Ganon knew her as the leader of this chapter of the followers of the apocalypse, an idealistic doctor who sported a mohawk. She was incredibly skilled as a doctor, although politically, she was quite naïve.

Though Arcade was thinking that more and more about the followers recently.

"You look exhausted, Julie," Arcade said with concern.

"No time to rest," the muttered tiredly. "We're losing patients by the hour." She gave a weak smile. "What's my sleep schedule compared to these lives? All these lives, Arcade."

The was a groan from the patient as his eyes fluttered open. The dirty-looking man sat up and gave a hiss of pain.

"Hey there, calm down. You just had stitches and your wounds are still fairly tender-" Julie started, trying to gently push the man back to a laying position.

"HANDS OFF!" the recently-operated man yelled. Fumbling by his hip, Arcade saw him pull something from a small pouch.

Julie stumbled backwards and before the man could come to his feet, there was a flash of blinding green light. A orb of plasma turned Julie's patient's head into a melting slag, and he fell, limbs thrashing, to the ground.

Arcade holstered his plasma pistol, it's conduit still warm from the recent discharge, and came to Julie's side. "Julie! Are you okay?"

Julie looked, with a look of sadness and frustration. "It was just a knife, Arcade. You didn't have to. . ."

"Let him stab you? How many doctors would we have to spare to operate on you?" Arcade looked to the now deceased man, twisted green sludge where his face had been. "Some of these men aren't worth operating on, Julie."

"We don't discriminate."

"And what if we should?" Arcade answered. "Why are we helping people who are trying to rob us and kill us the moment they wake up?"

"You're slipping, Arcade," she said with disappointment. She rose without Arcade's hand and brushed herself off. "You didn't even hesitate. That was a human life."

_And you don't hesitate to heal them. You don't think of the consequences. Never the bigger picture. _

But Arcade didn't speak. Because he knew she wouldn't hear him, even if the words reached her ears and even if the meaning of those words was transmitted by her ears to her brain. They just wouldn't . . . click. There was something in the way. . . ideology, emotion. . . something.

"Arcade!" A new doctor rushed in, a girl they had working at the gates. And for the moment, Arcade's and Julie's argument was postponed.

But Arcade knew it wasn't over.

"Yes, what is it?"

"There's a woman here for you. . . uh. . . she's wearing this huge metal suite."

"Teresa?"

The woman nodded. "Yeah, I think she said that."

"Can you ask her not to bring any more death to New Vegas?" Julie interjected darkly. "Ever since she _liberated_ Vegas, the people here have suffered and _died_."

"Teresa only controls the strip," Arcade corrected.

"And you think she'll stop at that?" Julie asked.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I've got a whole mess of wounded, Arcade."

"_You _wounded them."

"Well, to be accurate, the robot army wounded them," Veronica interjected with a laugh.

"Look, Teresa," Arcade said scratching his hair. "Ever since I returned from the battle of Hoover dam in Enclave Power armor with the gore from hundreds of Legionaries splattered on it. . . the Brotherhood hasn't exactly seen me as _one of their own_. I can't just snap my fingers and have Julie look after the patients you need tending to, I'm sorry."

"And what if I had something to offer her?"

"Look, you can't bribe Julie, and so long as your dating misses fisty over here, you can't exactly seduce her."

"Miss fisty?" Veronica asked in a sharp tone. "That's just. . . strange."

"And what if I offered to solve her Freeside problem?"

Arcade cocked an eyebrow. "I'm sure you have a plan."

"One's starting to come together."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

_(Fort McCarren)_

Decimus meditated on the last few weeks. There was little else to do. He had been locked in this room, alone, without a single light. He'd groped around the walls, mapping it out in the pitch dark to get a sense for where things are, but there was just a single door, and that door was very firmly locked.

For the first time in what seemed an eternity, the lock on the door clicked and the door swung open, as blinding light poured in.

After he was finished squinting his eyes, letting out a hiss of discomfort, he saw her. She wasn't wearing armor this time and by her side, a Legion Mongrel, a dog raised in abuse, taught to obey red cloaks, and kill all others.

"You've been gone for a while."

"I was busy."

Decimus sighed. "So? _Woman_? What next?"

"Do you know what this is?" Teresa asked, petting the dog that stood by her side.

"It's a dog."

She nodded, and saying no more, she presented a Brahmin steak. It's smell wafted to Decimus' nose and he remembered just how painfully hungry he had gotten in the many hours.

"Sit," she said to the dog. It sat, and looked up at her hopefully.

With a warm smile, she tossed a scrap of meat down, which the animal happily ate up. Decimus was amazed at how quickly she'd turned a Mongrel into such a docile animal. Usually they were far more. . . on edge. This dog sat happily, it's tail wagging lazily as it ate.

"Now Decimus," she said with a smile, "stand."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, having no idea what this silly woman was playing at. But the laser pistol at her hip was enough to get him to come shakily to his feet.

When he stood, she smiled, and presented the rest of the Brahmin steak to him. "We're off to a guard start," she said with a smile.

"What do you mean?"

"You were Caesar's dog, Decimus. You were fetching him the bone he wanted. But I broke Caesar. I broke the NCR. And I've broken you. You won't graduate to personhood, Decimus. But I've seen the surveillance footage of your legion's attacks and movements. . . and I know that you would make a perfect dog of a new tribe, a new Legion."

"There is only the Legion," Decimus retorted coldly.

"That's true. But there's something greater than the Legion, Decimus, you mutt. . . there's the New Vegas Empire. And if you sit when I say and stand when I say, you will be a dog more glorious than any Legion dog ever was."

"Why would you want me? You have your robots."

"Because I saw how you planned your operations. I saw how you organized your men. You didn't make them throw their lives away." She leaned against the wall lazily, regarding him with a superioristic smile. "And in the previous battles you fought from the footage I've seen, you planned them to limit the suffering of your men." She turned, stepping back into the doorway and as she stood, silhouetted in the blinding light, she continued to talk. "I know your secret, Decimus. I know your weakness. You care about the lives of your men. You're a good commander."

Decimus glared at this woman but couldn't summon a word to counter her.

"I can train you to make a better wasteland, Decimus. Things are coming into motion. Plans are starting to come together. Behind that arrogant Legionary swagger you learned there's at least the shell of a decent man. And it's him I want."

The door shut again. And darkness.

Decimus sat and thought. This woman had broken Caesar. It was true, even if he and many of his men didn't want to believe it. This _woman _was powerful. . . for now. But if she wanted to remain his master, she'd better stay powerful.

If she could get him to turn his back on Caesar, another more powerful one could get him to turn his back on her.

Her day would come. Decimus knew this, deep down in his core as he sat in the void of his cell. It would come.


End file.
